The mundane horribleness of a stop at a checkpoint

Driving a young Palestinian cancer patient to an appointment, ELHANAN MILLER witnesses the daily bureaucratic cruelties of occupation.

My day of volunteering began quite well. I arrived at the Israeli side of the Bethlehem checkpoint bright and early on a Tuesday morning to pick up two Palestinian patients, both named Muhammad.

One was an adult and the other a 12-year-old child, accompanied by his mother. I was tasked with driving them both to Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, just east of Tel Aviv.

Feeling frustrated with Israel’s political developments, I had recently decided to start volunteering with Road to Recovery, an Israeli non-profit that uses volunteers across the country to transport Palestinian patients from IDF checkpoints to hospitals inside Israel. The weather was beautiful and the ride from Jerusalem to the hospital was going to take just an hour each way.

Then I made my mistake. Rather than send me on Route 1, which connects Israel’s two largest cities, my phone navigator chose a faster route through Road 443, a controversial highway the exits Jerusalem on the north, winding through the West Bank on its way back into Israel.

Being the naïve Jewish-Israeli that I am, I didn’t think twice. But as I approached the Makabim Checkpoint near Modi’in, I suddenly became aware of my Palestinian passengers. Clearly, they had entry permits into Israel, or else they wouldn’t have been able to enter Jerusalem that morning. But would they face trouble by the soldiers at this checkpoint?

The first soldier at the checkpoint peeped into the car and noticed 12-year-old Muhammad and his veiled mother in the back seat.